Most adults who learned to tie there shoelaces properly as children, have a non-conceptual understanding of tying shoelaces. When they were first learning they had to conceptualise the steps, maybe even saying them out loud. Later after much practise and frustration, they learnt to internally tick o...

:) for humans, the arrow of time is curved, i.e. time is a human construct. the question is: "is the difference between me and the way i was twenty years ago the same as the difference between the me now and the me after death". metta Human understanding of time is a human construct seems fairly ob...

or put another way: i am reborn every moment and the arrow of time is curved; after death is it curved too? What do you mean by the arrow of time is curved ? sorry, just restating the same thing in various ways. the arrow of time only goes one way in terms of physics. however, it is noted that in t...

One thing that ought to be spelled out is that Hindus didn’t use the term ‘soul’. That is word of Greek origin which has been used to translate the Hindu ātman. But the literal meaning of ātman is ‘I am’, and it has many different connotations to the Greek word ‘soul’ which developed in an entirely...

What part of the second passage suggests something soul-like? The part that says 'a being is said to exist as a spirit composed of subtle types of the five skandhas'. That seems a pretty fair facsimile for 'the soul'. I don't think it sounds anything like a soul, given that a soul is considered to ...

I haven’t seen any passage which suggests “ the notion of a spirit being that transmigrates from life to life ” hence why I asked. From this post: During the period between death and the next birth, a being is said to exist as a spirit composed of subtle types of the five skandhas (aggregates). It ...

But I do agree that the notion of a spirit being that transmigrates from life to life does seem to contradict some basic Buddhist principles. It would, but why do you think that the bardo teachings suggest that? We’re discussing a passage upthread which says that. Yes, I have been following the thr...

"Not feel happy when someone throws you a surprise party." When someone throws you a surprise party, of course you feel happy! But...it's the difference between thinking, They threw me a surprise party, they must really like me... I must be really special... of course I am really special... no one ...

I think this is a really bad idea. I say that despite thinking that Sogyal and Mukpo are POS and unqualified. This sort of thing is best addressed individually between student and guru. Doing it this way looks like grandstanding and will reinforce some unfortunate perceptions of western students. W...

In the UK, a similar phenomena is the use of Friends Meeting Houses by the local community. These halls are used by Quakers (the Society of Friends) for their meetings but also hired out for use by the local community. They are quite popular with hirers because the facilities are normally good, the ...

David Brooks' current OP on how the Democrats are not taking on Trumpism : the Democratic campaign is inadequate to the current moment. It offers no counter-narrative to Trump, little moral case against his behavior, no unifying argument against ethnic nationalism. In politics you can’t beat someth...

... Always love a bit of Yes Minster/Yes Prime Minster. Though it often pushed a free marketer's jaundiced view of government intervention, I loved the accurate portrayal of an entrenched bureaucracy with poor old Bernard's naiveté alongside Jim Hacker's relentless (but often clueless) search for p...

Personally, I wouldn't necessarily interpret that quote as an instruction about the physical breath, but about our awareness of the breath. When using the breath as an object of mediation, early on it becomes quite easy to maintain attention to the sensations of the breath at the nose or the rising ...